SEO News
& Updates
Keep on top of what's changing in AI search, Google and SEO tools.
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Google Tells Platforms to Keep Link-Shared Pages Out of Search
Google's user-generated spam guide now covers AI tools and share-link products, and says pages made for sharing should stay out of the index by default.
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JPEG XL Now Works in Chrome, but Not in Google Images or Discover
Chrome 155 displays JPEG XL images, but Google Images and Discover previews do not support them. Keep a JPEG, WebP or AVIF fallback in the img tag.
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Emergency PHP Fix: Critical Flaws Let Attackers Run Code on Websites, Including WordPress
PHP's emergency update fixes two critical flaws that let attackers run code on a server without logging in. Updating WordPress does not apply it.
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Google Tag Manager Can Now Send Google Data Without Loading gtag.js
Since 12 October 2026, Tag Manager can send data to Google Analytics and Ads without loading gtag.js. The switch is opt-in; check three things first.
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ChatGPT's Missing UTM Tag Was a Bug, Fixed on 15 October
ChatGPT links lost their utm_source tag from 8 to 15 October 2026, moving some visits into Direct. It was a bug and is fixed; annotate the dates in reports.
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Google Business Profile Adds Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Halal and Kosher Menu Badges
Restaurants can now tag menu items in Google Business Profile as gluten-free, dairy-free, halal or kosher, alongside the existing vegetarian and vegan badges.
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Bing Webmaster Tools Now Lists AI Search Queries Where Other Sites Are Cited and Yours Is Not
Topic Portfolio, a beta in Bing's AI Performance report, sizes topics across all sites and lists grounding queries where competitors are cited and you are not.
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Rank Trackers Are Being Served Altered Google Results
Ahrefs, Semrush, Nozzle and other rank trackers report Google serving them normal-looking results pages with the wrong results since September 2026.
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Claude's Usage Policy Now Bars Seeding Search and AI Answers Through Fake-Independent Sites
From 12 November, Claude's Usage Policy bars swaying search and AI answers through sites posing as independent, and drops publishing from its high-risk list.
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Google Opens Applications for a UGC Fresh Data Program That Pushes Forum Content to Search
Large forums and social platforms can now apply to send fresh posts and engagement counts to Google Search through a dedicated pipeline, separate from crawling.
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Search Console Reports Hallucinated URLs as Real Pages
Search Console listed six hallucinated URLs on The SEO Handbook alongside real pages, with impressions. What that means for page-level data.
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Google Business Profile Policy Bars Calls to Action in Listings, Permits Offers in Posts
Google's Maps content policy names calls to action, time-bound promotions and pricing as off-limits in Business Profile listings, and allows offers in posts.
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Google Is Emailing Publishers Their Preferred Sources Selection Count
Search Console is emailing some site owners how many people have chosen their site as a Preferred Source. It is the first count Google has shared.
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Search Console Now Combines Traffic From Several Countries
Search Console's Performance report now lets you select several countries in one filter and see their Google Search traffic as a single combined total.
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Google Shows How Long Crawling, Indexing and Search Result Changes Take
Gary Illyes showed Google's typical and slowest times for 23 crawling, indexing and serving processes, from URL discovery to core update recovery.
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Google Defines Main Content and Calls Fabricated Author Profiles Deception
Google's people-first content guidance now defines main content, lists the four attributes raters judge it on, and calls fabricated author profiles deception.
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Google Says It Is Critical to Fact-Check AI Content Before Publishing
Google's generative AI content guidance now calls a manual fact-check of all AI output critical, extending the review to titles, alt text and structured data.
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Google Business Profile Now Penalises Misuse of Its Support Channels
Google Business Profile's new policy on misuse of support channels says repeated false or bad-faith complaints can get all further complaints rejected.
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Shopify Checkouts Now Register WebMCP Tools for Browser Agents
Browser agents can now fill in and place orders on eligible Shopify checkouts through WebMCP, with no merchant setup. Checkout type decides which qualify.
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Google Business Profile Posts: Unverified Contact Details May Be Removed
Google now says Business Profile posts with unverified phone numbers, email addresses or social handles may be removed. Use the Call now button instead.
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Shopify Changes How It Counts Sessions, Moving Conversion Rates
Shopify Analytics changed how it counts sessions from 21 September 2026, so conversion rate can move with no change in orders or sales.
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Google Releases the September 2026 Spam Update
Google's September 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 8 October, a run of 13 days and 16 hours. It applied globally and to all languages.
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Search Console Now Reports Searches Made With Lens and Circle to Search
A new Web: multimodal search type in Search Console shows traffic from Google Lens, Circle to Search, image uploads and Chrome's Search this image.
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Site Update: View and Copy Pages as Markdown
Every article, guide, pillar page and news story on The SEO Handbook now has a Markdown version you can open or copy in one click.
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Google Business Profiles Now Give You Four Days to Reject Suggested Edits
Google's Business Profile help documentation now gives owners four days to reject a user-suggested edit before Google may publish it automatically.
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Google Analytics 4 Adds Include Filters for Hostnames
Google Analytics 4 now lets you allowlist approved hostnames with an Include data filter, rather than only excluding unwanted ones.
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Google Adds Four Experimental Ad-Experience Metrics to CrUX
Google has added four experimental ad-experience metrics to the CrUX field dataset, measuring how a page's ads affect real users' page experience.
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Google Search Console Drops June Indexing Data With No Backfill
Google Search Console's page indexing report is missing several days of June 2026 data, and Google says it will not be backfilled.
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Google Business Profiles Add a Collected Info Tab
Google Business Profiles now have a Collected info tab where owners can review details Google's automated assistant gathered, and delete inaccurate ones.
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Google Cuts the Search Profile Threshold to 10,000 and Adds Multi-Account Support
Google has lowered the Search profile follower threshold to 10,000 and now lets one account manage up to 10 separate profiles, aimed at publishers running several brands.
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Cloudflare's AI Crawler Defaults Arrive, With a New Opt-Out That Protects Googlebot
Cloudflare's 15 September AI crawler changes are live: a plain Block now stops Googlebot, and a new setting opts out of AI training while keeping search crawlers in.
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Google Tests Paying Publishers Through an AI Contribution Pilot
Google is running an invite-only Search Console pilot that pays some publishers when their content shapes an AI Overview, AI Mode or Gemini answer.
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Scammers Are Using AI-Generated Photos To Redirect Calls From Google Maps Listings
Scammers are using AI-generated photos to hijack Google Maps listings, and the same fabrication technique is already defrauding delivery platforms.
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Google Business Profile Post View Counts Return
Google is rolling out view counts on Business Profile posts, returning a per-post metric it retired in 2023, for updates, offers and events.
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Google Rebuilds European Search Results for Hotels, Flights and Products
Google's search results in the EEA now carry two new blocks for hotel, flight, transport, product and local business queries. The UK is not in the EEA and is unaffected.
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People Also Ask Answers Hit 97% AI-Generated, After April's Slump to 11%
AlsoAsked measured 97% of English PAA answers as AI-generated in early September, up from 11% in April. The same curve has reversed twice this year.
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Google Stops Enforcing Site Reputation Manual Actions Inside the EEA
From 30 August 2026, a Google site reputation abuse manual action no longer demotes the offending section for searchers inside the EEA.
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Rank Math Pauses Its AI Support Agent Over WordPress Access Taken Without Asking
Rank Math paused its AI Support Agent after it created a WordPress Application Password and sent it to owner group.one without asking the user first.
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Google Trends Adds Category Filters to the Explore Page
Google Trends' Explore page now filters by category, with or without a query, so you can narrow trend data to a topic or browse a category's top terms.
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Google Analytics Adds Drag-and-Drop Dashboards
Google Analytics now has a native dashboard builder with a drag-and-drop canvas and funnel charts, published into Reports without going through Library.
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Google's Favicon Docs Confirm SVG Favicons Are Not Supported
Google's favicon documentation now names the seven formats it supports. Neither SVG nor WebP is among them, so an SVG-only favicon shows nothing in results.
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Google Confirms It Is Routing Search Result Links Through a goto Redirect
Google has confirmed it is routing search result links through a google.com/goto redirect, a technical measure that makes results harder to scrape.
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ChatGPT Now Cites Twice as Many Sources, and Listicles Lost Half Their Share
GPT-5.6 searches more and scopes searches to specific domains. Listicles and comparison pages lost citation share, but the pool they compete in doubled.
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Google Stops Auto-Correcting Double-Escaped JSON-LD
Googlebot now unescapes JSON-LD once instead of repeatedly, so structured data a template escaped twice is no longer corrected for you. Check your markup.
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Shopify Finishes a 10-Month Expansion of Its Theme Performance Docs
Shopify has concluded a rewrite of its theme performance best practices, including a page on speed apps that cheat testing tools, and built the docs for agents.
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Google Releases an Embeddable Preferred Sources Button for Publishers
Google's new one-click Preferred Sources button keeps readers on the page. Measured: the two-line install pulls 470 KB across 23 requests to render it.
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Reddit's Share of ChatGPT Search Citations Fell 86% to Under 1%
Three independent tracking panels recorded Reddit losing most of its ChatGPT citation share in August, along with arXiv and YouTube. The cause is unconfirmed.
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Google Releases the August 2026 Spam Update
Google's August 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 21 August, a run of 2 days and 16 hours. It applied globally and to all languages.
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llms.txt v2 Adds Link Relations for Finding Markdown Versions of Pages
The first revision to the llms.txt spec adds two link relations and a second Markdown URL pattern. Google's position on the file is unchanged.
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Google Stops Its Test of AI-Generated Images Inside AI Overviews
Google ran and then stopped a test placing AI-generated illustrations inside AI Overviews for recipe queries. It is not the Nano Banana feature.
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Google Confirms Search Console AI Impressions Drop Is a Logging Issue
Impressions lost from the Search Console Generative AI report on 13 to 17 August have reappeared on at least some properties, with the annotation removed.
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ChatGPT's Fetch Bot Bypassed robots.txt on 54% of Its Scrapes, TollBit Finds
TollBit measured how often AI bots scrape pages they were told not to. ChatGPT-User led at 54%, and European sites barely block the agent tier at all.
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GoFullPage Removed From Chrome. Prime Suspect: Pac-Man.
GoFullPage was pulled from the Chrome Web Store over a copyright issue. We compared the old build with its replacement. Exactly one asset didn't make it.
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Google lowers the follower threshold for Search profiles to 35,000
Google has cut the Search profile eligibility bar to 10,000 followers on YouTube, Instagram, X and TikTok, down from 100,000 at launch. Who can claim one now, and why it matters.
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Google bans repeated bilingual and transliterated names on Business Profiles
Google has updated its Business Profile name guidelines to disallow the same name repeated in two scripts, even when both appear on the shopfront. What to change.
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Anthropic will watermark all Claude-generated text under EU AI Act rules
Anthropic has signed the EU transparency code and will mark Claude's text and file output worldwide. How the watermark works, and what a mark does not prove.
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TIME shows AI crawlers a different website, with ads for LLM users
TIME serves AI crawlers a Markdown version of its site with sponsored brand FAQs built in. What we found testing it, and what it means for publishers.
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Microsoft Clarity splits AI citation queries into branded and non-branded
Microsoft Clarity now labels AI citation queries as branded or non-branded and splits Share of authority by the two. What the split is actually good for.
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Gemini Searches for Brands It Already Knows, geoSurge Study Finds
A geoSurge study of Gemini 3.5 Flash found brands the model already recalled were searched for 3.2 times more often than ones it did not.
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Blocking Internal Search Pages Is No Longer a Google Requirement
Blocking internal search result pages is no longer a Search Essentials requirement, Google's John Mueller confirmed, but he still recommends doing it.
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LinkedIn Lets Members Flag AI Slop and Drops 'Enhance Post'
LinkedIn is letting members flag posts and comments as AI slop, feeding its classifiers, and is removing 'enhance your post' in favour of a proofreader.
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Shared Claude Chats Were Indexed by Google, and Unguessable URLs Are Not Private
Shared Claude conversations surfaced in Google Search. The pages did serve a noindex header, but a robots.txt disallow stopped Google ever reading it.
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Google Bars Fake and Undisclosed Incentivised Reviews From Review Snippet Markup
Google added a review snippet structured data guideline on 24 July 2026: no fake or undisclosed incentivised reviews in your markup, on pain of manual action.
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Search Console Platform Properties Now Available Worldwide
Search Console platform properties for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube are now available to everyone, alongside a new Google guide on analysing the data.
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Site Update: A Shorter Format for Smaller SEO Stories
The SEO Handbook is introducing a shorter snippet format alongside full news articles, for stories that are useful but too small to sustain a full article's context and analysis.
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EU Fines Google €890 Million for Search Self-Preferencing Under the DMA
The European Commission has fined Google €890 million for self-preferencing its own services in Search and for Play Store steering restrictions, its first penalty under the DMA.
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Court Dismisses Google's DMCA Lawsuit Against SerpApi Over Search Scraping
A US federal court has dismissed Google's DMCA claims against SerpApi, ruling that bypassing anti-scraping controls to reach uncopyrighted search results is not circumvention under the law.
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EU Tells Google to Share Search Data With Rivals and AI Chatbots
The European Commission has told Google to share anonymised Search data, covering queries, rankings, clicks and views, with rival engines and AI chatbots from January 2027.
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Google's AI Mode Is Now Its Own Second Most-Cited Domain
Profound found citations to google.com inside Google's AI Mode grew 8.4x from April to June 2026, driven almost entirely by Business Profile and Product Knowledge Panel cards.
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Study: Wider ChatGPT Search access cuts traditional search by 9.4%
A Bocconi preprint using US clickstream data finds that giving people ChatGPT Search reduced traditional search use by 9.4%, and that ChatGPT sends a click back in only 5.2% of sessions.
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OpenAI Retires ChatGPT Atlas, Folding Agentic Browsing Into ChatGPT
OpenAI is shutting down ChatGPT Atlas on 9 August 2026, under 10 months after launch, and moving browser-based agentic work into ChatGPT and Codex.
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Google revamps Image Search and brings image generation into AI Overviews
For Google Images' 25th birthday, Google replaces the Image Search home with a personalised gallery and adds Nano Banana image generation to AI Overviews.
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ChatGPT Citations Shift When Its Hidden Search Pipelines Switch
Independent research finds ChatGPT routes web queries through undisclosed retrieval pipelines, and the sources it cites change when the pipeline does.
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Cloudflare Splits AI Crawlers Into Search, Agent and Training, With Default Blocks From 15 September
Cloudflare now sorts every crawler into Search, Agent or Training and, from 15 September, blocks Training and Agent bots by default on ad-supported pages.
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Google Search Console Adds Platform Properties for Social and Video Content
Google Search Console has a new platform property type showing how your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube posts perform in Google Search and Discover.
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Google's Mueller: llms.txt and Content Signals Have No Confirmed Crawler Effect
John Mueller says Google doesn't use llms.txt or llms-author.txt and knows of no crawler honouring Content Signals, as Cloudflare shifts its AI crawler defaults.
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Google Business Profile Reviews Vanished en Masse, and Google Says the Issue Is Now Resolved
Businesses lost reviews en masse from Google Business Profiles in early July 2026. Google has since said the issue is resolved and all missing reviews should be visible again.
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Google Has Switched Off the AMP Cache: Searchers Now Land on Publisher-Hosted AMP Pages
As of July 2026, Google Search no longer serves AMP pages from its cache. Clicks now go to the publisher's own AMP page. Google confirms no change to how AMP ranks.
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Fake DMCA Takedowns Are Being Weaponised to Deindex Competitors
Bogus copyright takedowns are being used as a negative-SEO weapon to remove rival content from Google Search. Here is the mechanic and the defensive playbook.
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Study: AI Search Collapses Onto Identical Answers When Models Cite AI Content
A June 2026 Graphite study of 1,528 simulations found AI search converges on the same answers 79.6% of the time when models retrieve their own AI-generated content.
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Bruce Clay, a Founding Figure of SEO, Has Died
Bruce Clay, widely credited with first using the term search engine optimisation and founding one of the earliest SEO agencies, has died.
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SimilarWeb: AI-Recommended Brands Get 2.5x More Site Visits, Mostly via Branded Search
A SimilarWeb panel study found brands recommended by ChatGPT were 2.5x more likely to get a site visit within seven days, with 55.9% of that traffic arriving as branded search.
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Google Rolls Out the June 2026 Spam Update
Google's June 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 26 June 2026, taking about two days. It applied globally and to all languages.
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Google Cloud Publishes the Open Knowledge Format for AI Agents
OKF is a draft open spec for representing curated knowledge as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter. Google scopes it to internal data, but SEOs are asking whether it could work for websites.
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Cloudflare and Browser Makers Announce PACT Bot-Verification Protocol
Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Shopify are developing PACT, a privacy-first token protocol to separate humans and authorised agents from abusive bots.
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Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face Publish the Agentic Resource Discovery Spec
ARD is a proposed open spec for publishing and discovering AI capabilities via an ard.json file. Backed by Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face, but adoption is unconfirmed.
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Study: AI Overviews Cite Self-Serving Listicles but Recommend Competitors
SEO specialist Lily Ray's June 2026 analysis found Google's AI Overviews cite brands' own 'best' listicles yet recommend competitors around 69% of the time.
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Pew: 60% of Americans Now Read AI Summaries in Search
A June 2026 Pew survey finds around 60% of US adults read AI search summaries and 49% use AI chatbots, but adoption is running well ahead of trust.
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PageSpeed Insights Adds an Agentic Browsing Audit
Chrome's Lighthouse now scores pages for AI agent readiness. The Agentic Browsing category checks the accessibility tree, llms.txt, and WebMCP, and runs in PageSpeed Insights.
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CMA Orders Google to Give Advance Notice of Significant Ranking Changes
The UK's CMA has imposed two binding conduct requirements on Google Search: fair, transparent ranking with advance notice of major changes, and mandatory search data portability.
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Bing Webmaster Tools Adds AI Visibility Insights: Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare
Bing Webmaster Tools has added four AI visibility features, letting publishers see why their content is cited in Copilot answers, not just which queries triggered it.
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152 Chrome Extensions Caught Faking Google Organic Search Traffic
Socket found 152 'live wallpaper' Chrome extensions laundering install traffic into fake Google organic visits, polluting analytics attribution for 105,000 users.
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Apple Launches Siri AI With Web Answer Generation: What Publishers Need to Know
Apple's WWDC 2026 Siri AI overhaul brings web answer generation via Applebot. The updated documentation gives publishers two distinct opt-out controls.
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Demand for Non-AI Search Has Measurably Risen Since Google I/O 2026
Since Google's AI Mode announcement at I/O 2026, DuckDuckGo's no-AI page visits are 84% above baseline, installs peaked at 30% growth, and both DuckDuckGo and Bing have launched opt-out tools.
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Google Analytics to Add Google Business Profile Data
Google is rolling out a native integration linking Google Business Profile to Google Analytics, bringing calls, directions, and bookings data into GA reports.
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Google Launches Search Profiles for Publishers and Creators
Google has officially launched Search Profiles, letting publishers and creators claim a customisable page in Search and Discover. Eligibility has since been cut to 10,000 followers.
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Google Adds AI Performance Reports and Opt-Out Toggle to Search Console
Google launched an AI performance report and opt-out toggle in Search Console for UK publishers, following CMA requirements under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act giving publishers formal controls over AI search.
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Microsoft launches Web IQ: Bing-powered grounding API for AI agents
Microsoft's Web IQ connects AI agents to Bing's index via passage-level grounding APIs. Microsoft says it already grounds Copilot, and some of ChatGPT's web answers.
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Google Preferred Sources Now Labelled in AI Overviews and AI Mode
From 27 May 2026, preferred publishers carry a badge inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google documents a label, not a change to which sources get cited.
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Google May 2026 Core Update
Google's May 2026 core update ran from 21 May to 2 June 2026, with ranking movement arriving in waves on 23 May, 30 May and 2 June rather than at the start and end.
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Google I/O 2026: Information Agents bring 24/7 background search to Google Search
Google announces Information Agents at I/O 2026: always-on background agents that monitor the web and send synthesised updates, launching summer 2026.
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Google I/O 2026: New Search box, AI Mode at one billion users, and conversational AI Overviews
Google redesigns its Search box for the first time in 25 years and announces AI Mode has reached one billion monthly users, with AI Overviews at 2.5 billion.
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Google I/O 2026: SynthID and Content Credentials come to Search and Chrome
Google is bringing AI content watermarking and C2PA provenance verification to Google Search and Chrome, with OpenAI and others adopting SynthID.
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Shopify Ships llms.txt and Agentic Discovery Files to Every Store
Shopify added llms.txt, agents.md, and sitemap_agentic_discovery.xml to every store in May 2026 with no announcement, but AI crawlers aren't reading them yet.
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Google officially positions AI search optimisation as SEO, not a separate practice
Google publishes AI optimisation guide confirming traditional SEO tactics remain foundational for generative AI features.
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Google Analytics Adds AI Assistant as Default Channel Group for Traffic Attribution
Google Analytics 4 now automatically classifies traffic from AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini as its own channel, replacing manual tracking workarounds.
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Google Search Console's 50-Week Impressions Logging Error Is Fixed
A GSC logging error inflated impression counts for 50 weeks from May 2025. Google fixed it going forward in April 2026, but historical data will not be corrected.
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Google Drops FAQ Rich Results from Search
Google has stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search as of 7 May 2026, with Search Console reports and API support to follow in June and August.
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Google Updates AI Overviews and AI Mode to Drive More Clicks to Publishers
Google announced five updates to AI Overviews and AI Mode on 6 May 2026, making inline links more prominent, adding hover previews, and surfacing subscription and social content.
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Google Brings Reddit Quotes Into AI Overviews as 'Expert Advice'
Google updated AI Overviews and AI Mode on 6 May 2026 to surface direct quotes from Reddit and other forums in a new section labelled Expert Advice, with full creator attribution.
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Google Preferred Sources Now Supports All Languages Globally
Google expanded Preferred Sources to all languages on 30 April 2026. Marked publishers get 2x click-through rates; 200,000 unique sites already selected by users.
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Adobe Completes $1.9 Billion Semrush Acquisition
Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on 28 April 2026, folding the SEO platform into a new Adobe CX Enterprise system alongside GEO and agentic search optimisation.
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Google March 2026 Core Update
Google's first broad core update of 2026 ran from 27 March to 8 April. Global data showed 79.5% of top-three results changing position, though UK results stayed quiet.
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Google March 2026 Spam Update Completes in Under 20 Hours
Google's March 2026 spam update ran for 19 hours and 30 minutes, the shortest confirmed spam update on record. Google never said what it targeted.
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Google's First Dedicated Discover Core Update Targets Clickbait and Boosts Local Content
Google's February 2026 Discover core update, the first of its kind, ran from 5 to 27 February 2026 and promotes locally relevant content while reducing sensational material.
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Google December 2025 Core Update
Google's final broad core update of 2025 began on 11 December, hitting major news publishers hard while favouring focused, single-intent pages and established eCommerce brands.
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Google August 2025 Spam Update
Google ran a spam update from 26 August to 22 September 2025 without naming what it targeted. What the tracking data showed, and why it disagreed with what SEOs reported.
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Google June 2025 Core Update
Google's June 2025 core update produced the highest top-ten churn Semrush had recorded in four years. Health moved sharply, finance barely moved, and some 2023 helpful content losses recovered.
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Google March 2025 Core Update
Google's March 2025 core update ran for 14 days and produced ordinary volatility. What the tracking tools measured, and which UK domains moved.
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Google Rolls Out AI Overviews in the UK
Google confirmed the UK rollout of AI Overviews on 15 August 2024, expanding the generative answer feature to the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil.
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